Something Different

I don't longe my horses very often. I used to do it more, back when Willie was still learning, and I frequently found myself unable to ride due to footing or a lack of well-fitting tack.  Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a valuable training tool and one of those things that Every Horse Should Know, but I also think it's easily (and frequently) overdone... Then again, that might just be speaking from the years of hanging out with Buckaroo Bubbas and show barns of various repute, each of whom thinks the best way to train a horse is to exhaust it into submission.

In any case, Willie generally finds himself getting longed or free-longed a few times a year, when I'm unwilling or unable to ride, or in one or two exceptional cases, when he is a Very Bad Pony and needs reminders about manners and things.  He's pretty "broke" and knows all his commands by heart, and used to stay on a circle without any rope at all.  Now that he's older and semi-retired, he occasionally gets a light longeing day just to get him moving in a productive sort of manner, and once in a while, to plod around with a nervous beginner.

Jabby, on the other hand, was pretty miserable to longe the handful of times I tried last winter.  I'd send him out on the circle, and before I cued him to do more than walk, he would pick up this automatous trot, with a vacant expression on his face and an air of "Trot this way twenty minutes, got it."  While I could admire the consistency, I use lots of transitions and changes of direction when I'm longeing, and he ignored every single smidgen of input.  So I gave a jiggle, and then a tug on the longe line, which sent him barreling across the arena at Full Charge.  Each further attempt to longe was unpleasant at best, so I abandoned the idea for a while, until trying once more this summer when I was trying to see if I was imagining a hinky step in his gait.  The results were pretty much the same, and since our current "arena" is a wide open plain adjacent to suburbia, I wasn't so keen on fighting that fight.

But we needed a change of pace, and so I dug out my surcingle and matched pair of longe lines to try some long-lining.  I thought perhaps having a more direct line of communication would help, and if not, well, he'd probably hit a tree or swamp or something eventually.

Before any of this handy experimentation could begin, though, I had to face the realization that once again Behemoth McLeviathan is too gigantic for normal clothes, because the dang surcingle was about 6" short of buckling.   I busted out my inner Girl Scout and ghetto rigged the thing with one of Willie's girths:

This actually worked out fantastically because the elastic on that girth had just started to fray, and I was going to chuck it.  With less strain and risk involved than holding a saddle and rider in place, I figure it can hang around exclusively for this purpose for a little while.  (Aw look, even Willie's equipment gets semi-retired!)  As an aside, in seven years of horse ownership (and eight years of tack ownership!) this is the first of my girths to bite the dust.  Must make a point to compare that brand to the others at some point...

I even managed to find some boots to squeeze Jabby's bulkage into, so we Velcro'd up and moseyed outdoors to give it a [hopefully figurative] whirl.  He immediately locked up his head and neck, as he is wont to do, but I figured I would let him work it out, and he eventually did.

Once I was confident enough that he wasn't going to take off or freak out, I rearranged the lines so that the outside looped around his hind end... Don't know if it actually makes that much difference, but figured it wouldn't hurt to give him a little extra encouragement to step under himself.  

He was much better than the last longeing attempt, and he listened pretty well to my half-halts and such. We did a lot of circles at the walk and trot, and changed direction and went off in straight lines a bit, and wandered over some of the cavaletti, too. He offered a canter at one point, and I let him take it for half a circle before politely asking him to come back down -- Willie cannot hold the canter on the longe line to this day, so I didn't want to discourage Jabby too much!

By the end he had started to relax and actually stretch, and was listening carefully and chewing the bit softly. There was still a little twinge of worry when I asked for something new, but he seemed like a pretty happy kid overall, and so was I.  We walked around the farm to cool down, and not so surprisingly, it was completely and 100% NBD.   He was ostensibly broke to drive at some point, but I don't know if he's done anything quite like this since he was three years old.

That last photo makes me chuckle, though despite his appearance and the wardrobe woes, I assure you he is not that massive.  Still, it's a good thing he's freezebranded -- people might doubt he's a Standardbred!